page_title: History of the Jews in Thessaloniki
section_title: Modern times
hierarchical_section_title: History of the Jews in Thessaloniki / Modern times
caption_attribution_description: Ελληνικά: Κάζα Μπιάνκα, Θεσσαλονίκη«Κάζα Μπιάνκα» This is a photo of a monument in Greece identified by the ID GR-B54-0008
context_page_description: The history of the Jews of Thessaloniki reaches back two thousand years.
  The city of Thessaloniki housed a major Jewish community, mostly Eastern Sephardim, until the middle of the Second World War. It is the only known example of a city of this size in the Jewish diaspora that retained a Jewish majority for centuries.
  Sephardic Jews immigrated to the city following their expulsion from Spain by Christian rulers under the Alhambra Decree in 1492. This community influenced the Sephardic world both culturally and economically, and the city was nicknamed la madre de Israel. The community experienced a "golden age" in the 16th century, when they developed a strong culture in the city. Like other groups in the Ottoman Empire, they continued to practice traditional culture during the time when western Europe was undergoing industrialization. In the middle of the 19th century, Jewish educators and entrepreneurs came to Thessaloniki from Western Europe to develop schools and industries; they brought contemporary ideas from Europe that changed the culture of the city.
context_section_description: From the second half of the 19th century, the Jews of Salonika had a new revival. Frankos, French and Italian Jews from Livorno, were especially influential in introducing new methods of education and developing new schools and intellectual environment for the Jewish population. Such Western modernists introduced new techniques and ideas to the Balkans from the industrialized world.
caption: Villa Bianca, residence of the Fernandez family
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